


danny boy

by purple01_prose



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Pacific Rim (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Seraphina's a badass, how the Guardians ended up as the supporting characters to the Shatterdome's story, implied mako/raleigh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1453549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple01_prose/pseuds/purple01_prose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kaiju came out of the Pacific, and Bunny felt them come. The tooth caskets of the children born after K-Day were a dark, burnished gold, and the Guardians are afraid. Yet they find their own ways to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	danny boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the only PR fic I'll ever write, because this idea slunk into my head and would not leave. I like the idea of, well, everything in this fic, and it's something I could see the Guardians doing.
> 
> Dedicated to ospreysoul over on Tumblr, because talking through this last night helped me get the juice back to finish this, and she came up with the idea of Tooth giving the Jaeger pilots a boost.

Bunny feels it first— _a crevice opening in the Pacific Ocean? Jumping about that could be tricky_.

 

He’s unable to tell what’s passing through, but he slowly becomes more and more aware of the chasm in the Pacific Ocean being used to...transport something.

 

And he is alarmed.

 

\--

 

North hears about San Francisco from the yetis, and he disregards everything—the Christmas preparations, the elves, even the yetis—to load up the sleigh with blankets, medicines, and the like.

 

Tooth and Jack join him, and they do rescue work for four days straight, finding lost children and making sure that they find the right authorities. While adults can’t see them, there are plenty of stories that come out of San Francisco of Santa, a giant hummingbird, and Jack Frost saving children from the wreckage and giving them cookies and water before leaving them with police and military.

 

\--

 

Sandy doesn’t trust the Jaeger program, but it’s better than nothing, and for the first few years, children have dreams of being Jaeger pilots and punching the giant monsters from the realms in which they came.

 

North starts building a lot of robots.

 

Jack’s snowmen are quickly used in the Jaeger vs. Kaiju fights.

 

For a while, it looks like the latest generation of tooth caskets—the children born around K-Day and after had dark, almost bronze caskets—might brighten again to gold.

 

Bunny’s eggs take on the colors of active Jaegers.

 

And then G*psy Danger goes down.

 

\--

 

Jack finds Pitch in what remains of Tokyo. He’s examining a red shoe—it’s too bright against the grey rubble, and Pitch seems—bigger, somehow.

 

“Are you feeding off of this?” Jack asks viciously, holding onto his staff.

 

“Yes,” Pitch says simply, gliding down the street. Jack follows him, angry and resentful. “Monsters emerge from the deep and wreak havoc on large human populations? That’s a lot of fear, Jack.”

 

“They’re being fought.”

 

“Machines don’t last forever, as North has found. What happens when one of them goes down? And it is only a matter of time—these creatures _learn_.”

 

“It hasn’t happened yet.”

 

“But it will. And then humanity’s last hopes will be ruined.”

 

“What does that mean for you, _Boogeyman_?”

 

Pitch snorts. “I grow in power, but I do not grow in believers. It is a strange dichotomy.” He looks up at the sky, and even the sky seems permanently grey now. “This is not what I would have wished for.”

 

“Isn’t it a new Dark Age?”

 

“Yes and no,” he replies quietly, finally looking at him. “The damage and the fear—it reminds me of something I thought I’d lost, a long time ago. “ He catches some of the dirty snow between his long fingers, a side effect of all the nuclear weapons. “What use is ruling a world that has been destroyed?”

 

“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better.”

 

“It was not intended to, Jack Frost.”

 

\--

 

After the fall of G*psy Danger, so many Jaegers go down. Sandy’s dreams start to feature stories of happier times, but he can’t help but notice how many children wake up weeping.

 

North puts a ban on all sci-fi related toys. They are to return to past toys, to give a sense of nostalgia and memories of security and safety.

 

Tooth takes up her swords again. The fairies aren’t just there to pick up teeth, they are there to protect the children, like they did in a bygone age.

 

Jack begins to avoid the remaining population centers. Thanks to so many nuclear weapons being used, the world has grown colder, and his stay usually means at least a few deaths from cold exposure.

 

Still, he can make the survivors smile if he tries, and when he sees a young Mako Mori staring disconsolately outside, he sends down a snowflake just for her, and he’s rewarded by her slow grin and bright eyes.

 

Mako Mori would later cite this experience as to what inspired her redesigns for G*psy Danger.

 

Bunny returns to bright pastels for his eggs, with touches of gold and silver. The gold and silver eggs go to the children living around the Pacific—they need it the most.

 

Katherine begins work on translating childrens’ books into the various dialects and languages of the people living in the danger zones, because she knows better than anyone the importance of books during a time of fear.

 

Ombric seeks spells to close up the Breach, but nothing in his spell books could have predicted monsters from the deep, and it’s hard to encourage belief when fear is so thick you could taste it.

 

Jaegers are falling one by one by one, and for a while, it seems like the end is near.

 

And then Seraphina gets involved.

 

\--

 

The brown-skinned woman with tangled brown hair and grey eyes has a name, but to them, she is merely the book woman. She brings boxes of books every two weeks, of every genre and length. Most of them love the fantasy she brings, the stories of people fighting against circumstances and monsters much bigger than they are and succeeding.

 

The older ones enjoy the stories of saints and faith and how God tests you with trials. They have clung tightly to their faith and the Virgin, constantly saying prayers. The younger ones cling to the stories of heroes, because this is what they need.

 

They live in an area that faces many Kaiju attacks, and all of them are sick on a regular basis from Kaiju by-products. They’ve lost half their community already, and it’s only a matter of time before the rest of them follow.

 

But the book woman comes and takes their mind of their troubles, if only for a little while. Her books are written in their language, and she always has lots of books, at least 2 for everyone.

 

She does not normally come to them when they face a Kaiju attack, but one day she is. She’s outside, giving an brightly illustrated to a child, and that’s when the siren goes off. They shout for her to come inside to the shelter—it’s better than nothing—but she hesitates and runs for a toddler near the beach, just as the kaiju emerges from the ocean. The toddler’s frozen in fear, and she’s running and scooping up the child.

 

For a moment, they think she’ll make it into the shelter, she’s running fast enough, but then the kaiju’s foot lands on the beach, and it creates a miniature earthquake. The book woman loses her footing and falls. The toddler is startled out of his frozen state and runs toward the open shelter door. The book woman tries to haul herself up, but the kaiju’s other foot makes landfall just as she stands, and she falls again and hits her head.

 

She lies on the ground, unmoving, and they can’t help her, not with the kaiju looming directly over her. They start to close the doors, but then one of the girls tugs on her mother’s skirt and points at the sky.

 

It had been a perfectly clear day, a gorgeous day that made you forget about kaiju. Now the sky was grey and there were crests coming off the waves, and a wave rose up behind the kaiju. The wave has a woman’s silhouette in it, and they can see her scowl before the crest breaks up her face.

 

The wave reaches out—and acting utterly unlike any tsunami they have seen—and wraps around the kaiju and pulls it back to the ocean. The kaiju fights it, but the wave is stronger (what is stronger than a kaiju?), and it drags him down.

 

The woman reforms out of the water onto the kaiju’s back, and the wind whip up and around them until they can barely see her through the wall of wind. It looks like—but they _must_ be wrong—that the woman reaches out a hand and a lightning bolt lands in it, and then she slams it into the back of the kaiju’s neck.

 

They have heard a kaiju roar, screech, growl, and groan. They have never heard a kaiju scream.

 

The kaiju goes limp, and the storm melts away. The wild woman turns toward them, and they back into the shelter, but they can see her smile before she snaps her fingers, and there’s a pop of wind and then an old man with a long white beard is standing next to the book woman. He has a staff and looks very surprised, and the woman calls to him in English, and one of them whispers, “She told him to tend to her.”

 

The man looks very confused until he sees the crumpled book woman, and then he nods, kneeling by her. The careful way he treats her says that they’re related, possibly his granddaughter. The woman on top of the kaiju corpse moves her arms until the water moves them away, into the open ocean, and the old man vanishes with the book woman.

 

They are confused, and that does not change even when the PPDC arrives.

\--

 

“Marshal.”

 

Pentecost looks away from the omnipresent rain of Hong Kong to look at Herc Hansen. “I never would have believed it rained so much here until I lived here for longer than a week.”

 

“Stops when you’re away, sir.” Herc’s smile is small and gentle, and Pentecost relaxes a little. “We talked to the people in Eastern Samar again, and their story didn’t make any more sense a week after.”

 

“There was a sudden, small storm system that erupted just offshore and disappeared just as quickly. And there were kaiju footprints found at the scene.”

 

“It still doesn’t make any sense, and in this world? For something to make even less sense than our usual lives—that’s saying something. Sir.”

 

Pentecost sighs. “I suppose we’ll just have to accept it and move on.” He turns back to look out the window, and for a moment, he sees a woman’s smile in the clouds above. He blinks and it’s gone, and he wonders if he’s finally giving in to the cancer, but then he reminds himself it would have been Luna’s birthday in a week and it’s no surprise she’s on his mind.

 

“Right.”

 

\--

 

Tooth likes the pilots. She does. They’re protecting people, and there’s something about them that reminds her, somehow, of the Guardians. They work so hard, and the protection of the people matters so deeply to them.

 

So sometimes, she gives them a boost when they first start drifting together. She knows that there’s a risk of the pilots getting lost in the memories, but the intimacy helps them be better, know each other better, so she’s willing to have the risk.

 

The safety of the children—of humankind—is too important otherwise.

 

She finds Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket’s caskets, and she finds a quiet spot to sit down with them in her lap. Baby Tooth sits on her shoulder but otherwise, all of the other fairies keep up with what needs to be done. She traces the diamonds on Raleigh’s casket before she picks up Mako’s box. She puts her fingers on the top of the box and focuses, and the casket starts to glow.

 

She can’t see the memories—she designed the spells on the box so that the person has that privacy—but she can feel the memories slam into Mako and Raleigh, and she sighs and lets the box rest in her lap.

 

They will do.

 

They will do rather nicely.

 

\--

 

The Breach opens long enough to release three kaiju, and Bunny lurches in his Warren. The eggs are concerned and cluster around him, but he waves them away as he falls to all fours. The longer the Breach is open, the more nauseous he feels, and by the time it’s closed, he’s emptied the contents of his stomach multiple times.

 

After he cleans away the mess, he wonders where he went wrong, what protections he forgot, to allow a crisis of this magnitude to occur. He’d helped make this planet, the Breach is his fault.

 

He doesn’t know how to fix it.

 

\--

 

Sandy does not usually bother with the dreams of adults, but Tooth’s concern for the pilots and support staff of the last Shatterdome has spread to him. He can feel Jack’s pain that he does not risk staying long in any one location in fear of children dying of cold exposure, North’s gnawing discontent over the lack of action from Manny.

 

Seraphina had appeared to him months ago, and she had said, “They tried to kill Katherine.”

 

He knew. Ombric had contacted him.

 

“I killed the monstrosity responsible for her near-death, and then I towed its corpse back to the Breach. It was closed, and no matter what I could do, I could not open it. It is apparently a door that only opens from one side.”

 

Sandy had tilted his head.

 

“I would have killed them,” she exploded, thunder cracking around them. “I would have _burned them to the ground_ for daring to hurt one hair on Katherine’s head.”

 

‘ _This is not your battle_.’

 

“The hell it isn’t!”

 

_‘This fight is not about us, and while Katherine’s injury made it personal, we are not the defenders of humanity to ride into battle.’_

 

“I’m not a Guardian, I don’t have to play by your rules.”

 

_‘But neither are you a fan of humanity. This is not your battle, Emily Jane_.’

 

“Don’t call me that anymore,” she had said angrily. “It’s not my name. Seraphina is my chosen name, and I will not answer to anything else.”

 

At times, the use of her name could rein her in. Not apparently now.

 

_‘Leave them to their battle. It is not ours.’_

 

Seraphina had left in a whirl of disgust and lightning, but since she had not joined the fight of the pilots, Sandy assumed she’d listened to him.

 

He knew—he could not put it into words, but it came from the feeling that emanated from Manny—that somehow the humans would settle this without them. If he had anything to do with the idea that the humans chose giant robots to fight giant monsters, he said nothing.

 

Dreams can provide all sorts of inspiration, after all.

 

\--

 

Katherine knows when the Breach is closed, just like all of them do. Jack drops out of the sky before he manages to catch himself. Bunny’s fur finally lays straight. North finally feels like he can make sci-fi toys again. Sandy relaxes.

 

The tooth caskets of the children born the day after the Breach is closed have returned to their bright gold, and Tooth knows that the Breach will never open again after, not if the caskets are bright gold. They’ve become darker before, usually in times of massive global conflict, but they’ve always returned to their brightness eventually.

 

They’re bright now, and she can hope again.

 

Katherine quickens her step through the fog of the early morning. “Miss Mori?”

 

Mako stops dead, and Katherine remembers that’s what Pentecost calls her. “My name is Katherine, and I have a proposition for you.”

 

“I’m retiring,” Mako says automatically.

 

“Oh no, it’s not about the Jaeger program.” Katherine looks her over, her hair falling down her shoulder. “Not even about Mr. Becket, although it might end up being so.”

 

“Then why are you accosting me in a foggy morning?”

 

“In one hundred years, humanity will consider these twelve years or so very strange,” Katherine says with a soft smile, and Mako relaxes despite herself. “I was wondering if you might help me ensure they’ll be remembered properly.”

 

“How?”

 

“I want to write a book about these experiences, and you and Mr. Becket are the remaining Jaeger pilots. Mr. Becket’s hardly left the Shatterdome since you closed the Breach two weeks ago, and while I’ve secured interviews with Dr. Geiszler and Dr. Gottileb, your input would be valuable.” Of course, the input Katherine’s received on Raleigh’s location usually puts him in Mako’s room, but there’s no need to say that.

 

“Why write this?” Mako asks at last.

 

Katherine smiles. “Because it will be a very good story.”

**Author's Note:**

> I will ship Seraphina/Katherine in hell.


End file.
